:03:05
Now, in a traditional Western,
the hero would look at this child,
:03:09
and take an interest in what was going on.
:03:11
Perhaps intervene in some way
in what's about to happen.
:03:15
But Eastwood is simply
having a drink, watching,
:03:18
sussing out what's happening around him,
he's not going to intervene.
:03:22
At this stage, he's just an onlooker,
trying to see what's going on.
:03:26
And the look of Eastwood
is so distinctive in Western terms.
:03:30
The stubble. American
Western heroes didn't have stubble.
:03:34
There's the poncho. There's the sort of
laid-back look, the coolness of the hero.
:03:39
Plus he's a big man on a little mule,
which is interesting.
:03:42
One of the references in the opening
is to Shane, a favourite with Leone,
:03:46
where you have a little man on
a big horse, Alan Ladd, at the beginning.
:03:50
But this is a big man on a mule,
and he's dressed in a very stylish way.
:03:56
This is a Roman actor called Mario Brega
playing Chico, a sadistic thug,
:04:00
kicking the baby,
and what's the hero doing?
:04:04
He's not intervening. He's just watching.
:04:07
This is a very different
kind of Wild West hero.
:04:18
These villages in Almería in Spain,
with their single-story adobe dwellings,
:04:23
whitewashed, were used
a lot in Italian Westerns.
:04:25
They were existing places. Minimal set
dressing would enable them to be used
:04:30
as 19th-century villages
on the Mexican-American border.
:04:35
The actress is Marianne Koch,
a West German actress
:04:38
who had just been voted by
the West German magazine Filmmaker
:04:42
the most popular actress
for films in Germany.
:04:45
She agreed to appear in this movie, even
though it's almost a nonspeaking part.
:04:50
Wearing a lot of eye makeup, Cleopatra
style. I guess that was the thing in 1964.
:04:59
Of course, there weren't trees
in this part of Almería. It's desert.